Heart of Repentance

To pray with humility requires a repentant spirit. As the Holy Spirit prompts us with conviction, God expects repentance. The act of repenting means to change one’s mind and purpose. To change one’s mind but not one’s heart is incomplete repentance. Complete repentance means we are heading in one direction, and then we turn and head in the opposite direction.

Confession is acknowledging the sin and who it is against, but repentance is changing my mind and heart concerning the sin. I am not sure if I can truly repent without truly confessing, and I probably cannot truly confess without truly repenting. If I have a pattern of sin in my life and I am continually repenting, maybe I am repenting in my mind but not in my heart.

–Taken from The Path toward Passion (Nine Disciplines that Connect Your Heart to God’s) by Dean Trune. (Click on the title for more information about this resource).
Lord God, sometimes it seems that there are certain sins in my life that crop up too often. Show me which things have so gripped my heart that I struggle to release them fully to You and wash my hands of them forever! Help me to be an overcomer and to gain victory in these areas where the enemy would hold me captive. I long to be free of everything that separates my heart from Yours.

Prayer Points
Praise God for caring for you (1 Pet. 5:7). Thank him for being so interested in your welfare that he even knows the number of hairs on your head (Lk.12:7). Confess those times when you failed to take his care seriously. Commit yourself to imitating God’s care by caring selflessly for others. Ask him to fill your heart and mind with a sense of his deep love for you.

Pray that your church’s evangelistic efforts will be caring efforts. Ask God to show your church how to minister to more than just the spiritual needs of those who don’t have a saving relationship with Christ.

Prayer Pointer
“Life’s best outlook is a prayerful uplook.” —Anonymous

–Prayer Points taken from Patterns for Prayer by Alvin VanderGriend (Click on the blue title for more information about this resource).